"Your name," Bones asked.
"Lucius Malfoy," Lucius said in a slightly trembling voice. Seemingly deliberately or not, he raised his head and glanced at Kyle, who was seated at the very top.
"At the same time, I was also a Death Eater."
It was as though a bomb had been dropped in the hearing room. Lucius's next words caught everyone off guard, including Amelia Bones.
"My wife, Narcissa Malfoy, and I were both led astray by the Dark Lord and committed grave mistakes."
A fresh wave of murmuring rose around them.
"So you came here to flaunt the fact that you weren't arrested?" Bones stared at him sternly.
She truly had not expected Lucius to say something like that.
Everyone knew that the Malfoys were Death Eaters, yet the Aurors had never been able to find any evidence that could justify arresting them.
Of the Malfoy family, only Draco Malfoy was still wanted for killing Dumbledore.
As for Lucius and Narcissa, ever since Voldemort had taken them away from the entrance of the Ministry of Magic last time, they had seemingly vanished completely.
No one had even seen them during the previous Battle of Hogwarts.
They had not participated at all, so the Aurors naturally had no grounds to arrest them.
Of course, if the Aurors had wanted to, they could have dug further into the past and surely found some excuse... but there was still a huge pile of captured Death Eaters waiting to be tried, and they could not be bothered to give themselves even more work.
Yet before the Ministry of Magic had even held them accountable, Lucius had actually stepped forward on his own.
Such a foolish act... was this really the Malfoy they knew?
But now that he had said it, no one else could